


Braid

by bibliomaniac



Series: Hair (Or, How It All Went Wrong And Then Got Better) [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Balance Arc spoilers, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 00:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13601574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliomaniac/pseuds/bibliomaniac
Summary: Lucretia thinks the twins are the same when she first meets them, but after years of spending time with them, she knows she was wrong. One difference she picked up on pretty much immediately, though: Taako's hair is short and Lup's is long, and that never changes.(Until everything does.)[aka a sad character study about Lucretia and the twins and how she gets to know them and how she gets to the point she does at the end of The Stolen Century, and how she feels after]





	Braid

**Author's Note:**

> basically i wrote this because i love Lucretia as a character dearly and i've already written [a song](http://anuninterestingperson.tumblr.com/post/170481493076/whew-its-been-a-while-since-i-wrote-a-song-but-i) and [done some art](http://anuninterestingperson.tumblr.com/post/170575988571/lucretia-is-such-a-good-character-and-i-hope-she) so i figured i'd complete the trifecta of weirdly obsessive artwork in my third medium of choice
> 
> cw for a very brief isolated mention of transphobia and for insecurity and self-hatred

Only people who didn’t know Taako and Lup thought they were anything alike. Lucretia had been like that, once. She observed them, as was her wont, at the press conference. She wrote down mental notes, fingers itching to render the notes physical but knowing writing would, right then, be inappropriate. But mentally, she categorized their similarities—matching smirks and tilted heads, both wearing a redundant combination of red jacket and robe with some obscenely bright color underneath, eyes full of mischief and barely-restrained restlessness. Smart, too, both of them. Partially in the way IPRE values; they wouldn’t be here otherwise, of course. But also partially in the way they assess the crowd around them, wary and almost distrustful, analytical, like they’re constantly evaluating what they would do if things went sideways and they had to fight or flee. And the people, too. Their thinly-veiled attempt at looking disinterested belies their careful cataloguing of the individuals surrounding them. Lucretia wonders what kind of judgments they’re formulating between shared whispers—loud enough to make it clear that they’re not paying full attention, but soft enough that the contents can’t be heard.

She wonders what they think about her.

As she thinks that, in an event that she might find more disconcerting if she had reason to believe the twins could feasibly read her thoughts, Lup turns to look at her and then, smiling sharply, tugs on Taako’s sleeve, whispers something again, and he turns and smiles the exact same dangerous smile. She stares back at them levelly, and their smiles widen in tandem before they look away again. Lup whispers once more, and Taako makes a disgusted face before rolling his eyes and grinning delightedly.

When they exit the stage, they move as one, and Lucretia decides that when she writes about them tonight, she’ll make only one entry. Lup-and-Taako, the twins. It’s a categorization that makes sense to her. Apart from the obvious gender difference, the only other major thing she observes that varies between them is their hair. Taako wears it shoulder-length, while Lup has a braid that goes down almost to her waist. 

But one hundred years pass, and it’s clear enough by even the end of the first cycle that she had made a terrible mistake in her initial assessment of the twins. They have their similarities, sure—both witty and a bit acerbic and guarded—but their _differences_ , oh, the _differences_ are what make them Taako and Lup, her friends and then (much later) her family. Both of them can cook, for example, but Taako makes it an art form. He huffs the first time she asks him, hesitantly, if he might want some help with making breakfast, and he watches in horror as she cracks eggs in what is apparently the _entirely_ wrong way, and his movements are practiced and sharp as he demonstrates the ‘only correct’ way, and she might have thought he was annoyed with her if he didn’t have the smallest hint of a smile as he walks her through the process of making Eggs Benedict, if his shoulders didn’t relax the longer he spent with the food, if his gestures didn’t get bigger and his speech more casual as he loses himself in the cooking. His lesson is interspersed with quips and jabs—mostly at her apparent cooking ineptitude—but by the end of that hour, she’s made an Eggs Benedict, and when he looks over it he says, “You would have done substantially worse if I weren’t here, so you’re welcome,” and she knows somehow that means he’s pleased.

Taako wraps up all his caring for people in thorns, behind walls, behind nasty comments and egotistical remarks, and Lucretia thinks he’s as interesting a puzzle as anything they’ve seen on the mission thus far. He’s detached from most people, but his devotion and connection to Lup shines so brightly that she wonders what it would be like to have something similar aimed at herself. It becomes almost a project—figuring out what he genuinely likes, sifting out the real emotions from the dross of the emotions he tries to project. He likes cooking, she knows that. Difficult magic, but less from an academic standpoint and more from a ‘getting-shit-done’ standpoint. He likes making people laugh, and solving problems, and he makes himself seen in almost every situation with a desperation that Lucretia knows must cover up a deeper insecurity. He’s callous, and a bit of an asshole—self-proclaimed, even—and deceitful and somewhat of a kleptomaniac and any number of other bad things, but he’s also clever, and he feels intensely, and he blames himself for so many things, and Lucretia delights in getting to know him. Every piece of information she gathers endears him to her more, and at the end of their century together, she knows that she would never trade him for the _world._

 _Just his memories,_ she will think as she holds a book in her hand, and she will feel a wave of regret and nausea wash over herself with almost physical force, and she will do it anyway. 

Lup, on the other hand, cooks only out of necessity. She is fascinated by deep, dark magic, and she loves destroying _things_ but never, ever _people._ She’s endlessly energetic until she realizes that her teammates don’t expect anything out of her, and then she’s somewhat more quiet, but no less incandescent. While she keeps her guards up until she knows you, when she’s made her decision she loves fast and fierce and deep and with astonishing loyalty. It’s only a month into their first cycle that Lup flops down next to Lucretia and takes a look at her notes, and Lucretia flushes as she realizes she’s open to a page containing a doodle of Lup with a mongoose, and where she’s expecting rage, she instead gets Lup saying brightly, “I like you.” She leaves immediately after that, apparently saying everything she thought needed to be said in that situation, but Lucretia stays staring after her, still flushed, mouth slightly parted. It won’t be the last time she has that effect on Lucretia.

Lup is a firestorm, just as disruptive and just as beautiful. She laughs freely and gives affectionate nicknames and she refuses to stop caring for the worlds they explore even when it is so, so much easier not to. She stops them from killing the robot colony, and she becomes a lich to give them a better chance of survival, and she always stops whenever Lucretia is hanging behind, hesitating, to throw an arm around her shoulder and talk with her until she feels better. Lucretia thinks she could be in love with her if she allowed herself to be—less because that’s a feeling she has frequently and more because she doesn’t think anybody could not love Lup, at least a little. Lup chooses Barry, though, and Barry chooses Lup, and she is not bitter, because they have always seemed something like an inevitability, and because they’re _both_ her family and she loves them when they’re together just as much as she loves them when they’re apart. More, perhaps.

 _Just not enough to let them find her,_ and the book floats towards Junior. 

And then comes the cycle with the Judges, and Lucretia is lonely and scared and tired and _everything_ relies on her being strong enough and even when they come back, that doesn’t leave. None of it does. She’s so, so tired of this endless charade, and she’s so, so scared both that it will never stop and that it will end, and she is so, so lonely, the kind of lonely that comes from knowing that people can leave, and she _needs_ to be strong enough for them, and so she will be. She _will_ be. She practices her shielding spell and she plans and she doesn’t cook with Taako as much anymore and she doesn’t show Lup her drawings all the time but she is _strong,_ and she knows that is what has to be most important right now.

There’s a cycle before that when Lucretia asks Lup curiously why she and Taako never change their hair. Or, well, that’s inaccurate. Taako transmutes his hair color regularly, sometimes burning up all his energy on it when he’s feeling particularly bored. All the colors of the rainbow, separately and then all together. And he tries out undercuts and pompadours and curls and ponytails, and he’ll do the same sort of thing for Lup when she lets him, but the lengths are always the same. Taako has short hair and Lup has long hair and they never switch, and Lucretia is curious, so she asks.

Lup gives her a bemused smile, slowly gentling into something more genuine. “That’s such a you question, Lucretia.”

Lucretia doesn’t blush as much around her anymore, but she still does now. “I’m just curious.”

“Of course you are.” Lup lies back, thinks about it. “I mean, I don’t think it’s ever been a conscious thing. If Taako ever wanted to grow his hair out long, it’s not like I’d stop him. He’d look kick-ass, I bet, as always.” She twirls a loose piece of hair around a finger, then says, “People compare us a lot. They think because we’re twins that we’re the same—” Lucretia winces at that. “And, I don’t know, when we were kids and we had our hair the same length people said I couldn’t be a girl because I looked just like Taako and he was a boy. Package deal.” She snorts, but the sound has no humor in it. “They were just assholes, but I started growing out my hair, and Taako kept cutting his even though I totally saw the way he looked at my hair. He probably wanted to grow his out too. It was…easier, maybe, for him to look the same as me, because when he did it reminded him that he—had a connection, maybe? Someone who was tied to him irrevocably and couldn’t leave him. No matter where we went or what happened to us, there would always be someone on the other side of the mirror. But he gave it up for me, because of course he did.” Lup’s voice is laced heavily with an almost unbearable fondness. “Taako has always been the best part of me.”

“I think there are a lot of great parts of you,” Lucretia had murmured, not intending it to be an overture, just a statement of fact.

Lup had laughed, pulled Lucretia over to drop a kiss on her cheek. “Oh, obviously. But Taako is at the top.”

(“Of what?” he had asked as he sauntered into the room, trying to disguise his curiosity, eyes flickering between the two of them before his face settles into a smirk. “If you’re asking me to be at the top of this little gay pyramid you’re trying to form—”

“ _Gross,_ Koko _—_ ”

“I’d have to decline, because weird vibes and also because I’m saving myself for someone worthy of me.” He had flipped his hair over his shoulder. “A—”

“Sentient fart?”

“I was going to say minor god—Lulu, don’t be juvenile, I’d only date a sentient fart if he were _hot_ as _hell_ —” 

“But it’s not off the table?”

“Oh, is anything with me, really?” he had asked as he draped himself dramatically across their laps. “Apart from you and Lucretia here.” He had tapped her nose, grinning up at her. “You’re just in possession of the entirely wrong gender identity for me, sweetheart, no offense.”

“None taken?”

“It’s okay, you can mourn in private.”

And Taako had made no move to get up, and Lup had run her fingers through his hair, and Lucretia had watched as the short strands fell through her fingers like water, and they were warm and comfortable and Lucretia had thought for just that single frozen moment that it might be okay for things to always be like this.)

They aren't, though, because they enact their plan and then Lucretia enacts hers, and Lup is gone and Barry is gone and Davenport isn’t Davenport and Magnus and Merle and Taako are out there, but she can’t see them. It’s too risky. They might remember, they might _hurt_ themselves trying to remember, and she can’t hurt them any more than she already has.

It takes her far too much time to realize that she still needs them as much as she ever has, and even longer to convince herself that this mission really is the most important thing, and that means she’ll have to risk them getting hurt one more time. Or multiple times. Or, gods, she’s just going to have to give up on counting; heaven knows she’s already given up on herself.

But not the plan. Never the plan. It’s all she has left at this point. She gave up her _family_ for this, everything she ever loved, and it _has_ to work, and for it to work she needs them. So. She sets everything up so that at the end of the day they’ll come to her ( _back to her_ , her treacherous mind whispers), and she waits.

They all look different, standing in front of her. Merle looks a bit more tired, and Magnus looks older, but _Taako,_ gods, _Taako_ is almost the worst, because he doesn’t look that much different unless you knew him before, and Lucretia did. If he was wary at the press conference, now he’s downright hostile, and he jokes like he always has, except there’s absolutely no mirth in it. Everything about him is cold and closed-down and angry, and she could have predicted that, but—

His hair.

It’s long, braided, and almost down to his waist. She looks at it a touch too long, eyes wide, and when she looks back up, he’s glaring at her almost defiantly, like he’s daring her to comment. Like other people have.

She shakes her head imperceptibly and continues talking, but her mind is in a daze. When they’ve all left, she retreats to her private office and sits down heavily in a chair, and then she cries. She sobs bitterly for what feels like an eternity, or maybe just ten years, or maybe just fifteen minutes, but she weeps until there aren’t any tears left for her. Even then it feels like there _should_ rightly be more. With all she’s done, only fifteen minutes, really? Is that the cost of taking everyone’s life away from them? Of taking Lup away from Taako? 

Gods, she can’t stop seeing his hair in a braid. On the opposite side Lup usually wore it, but otherwise almost exactly the same. She wishes she could ask him why. She wishes she could ask him if a part of him remembers. She wishes she could ask him anything, and that he could lie down on her lap and tap her nose and grin up at her, and Magnus would come in and join in on the growing dog pile even though he’s _really_ the last person who should be laying on anyone—he does well as a base, but he’s always been too densely muscled to be on top without everyone choking—and Barry would sit in a really obvious way next to Lup, and Merle would take a running dive on top of everyone and they’d all groan and Taako would screech that he’s down to probably negative one million HP and that he’s going to Magic Missile all their asses if they don’t get off, and Davenport would laugh helplessly as he sees them all piled atop one another and Merle would pat the open portion of Magnus’ back invitingly and—and for a moment, it would all be—all be just like—

But. She returns the enchantment to her painting, and her face fills the frame that once contained the faces of all her friends. She looks forward, hands flexing around her staff—she always keeps it around these days—and she reminds herself that she has to do this for them all to be safe, and that she has to be strong, and that she _is_ strong, and next time she sees Taako’s braid she doesn’t even blink.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! tumblr is [anuninterestingperson](http://anuninterestingperson.tumblr.com) if you want to drop by and sob about taz with me.


End file.
